ivythrowaway

10 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

It should also be noted that international students are generally not eligible for any financial aid whatsoever through FAFSA (and the "need-blind" admissions process available to domestic students in which these institutions cannot see your financial status in the application process is not available to international students), thus the international students that do attend these institutions are more often than not within the top socioeconomic bracket of their respective country.

ivythrowaway

10 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Thank you for posting this - it more or less summed up my thoughts exactly. It should also be noted, however, that these "upper-class universities" are increasingly trying to court the "lower-middle class" by offering extremely generous financial aid (usually full rides) to those who have a household income less than 60-80k/yr–though these students make up the vast minority of those in attendance, though a higher amount than upper-middle class students. The result is a sort of unofficial idea of "If you're not already in the 1%, you soon will be."

Columbia University, for example, has its current tuition at around $70k/yr, which is over 2.5 times the average American individual of $26k/yr. Columbia and its peer institutions rarely offer merit based financial awards, thus incentivizing the wealthy who can afford it and the poor who it's essentially free for, while avoiding a large part of the American middle-class altogether.

Another group of schools, besides the Ivies, that primarily serve the upper class are the prestigious small liberal arts colleges, such as Williams, Pomona, Amherst, Middlebury, etc. These are some of the smallest schools in the country, yet have the largest endowments per capita (Pomona's has the fourth largest endowment per student in the country, for example, at $1.5 million / student, which is above both Princeton and Harvard). Taken in conjunction with ~$65-70k/yr tuitions (and increasing at an average of 5% a year!), the results are institutions that cater primarily toward the upper class yet put forward the idea they server everybody by enrolling a token amount of lower class students (as many admitted students unfortunately discover they cannot afford to attend).

Source: I studied this topic at, yes, one of these very institutions. I believe the entire university system–financing especially–needs vast reform.

Harvard also released an [infographic](http://features.thecrimson.com/2015/senior-survey/) on their graduating class of 2015 "by the numbers"–notably, 2% of the nation earns $250k+/yr, but at Harvard they made up 30% of the class. That statistic is increasing, not decreasing.

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